Boeing got the big bucks at $5B or so for their crewed services because they have the "better" more reliable design.
SpaceX only got $3B or so.
Boeing running roughly 60%+ more per seat as well.
So a real accomplishment so far for SpaceX to pull this off.
Also, Boeing doesn't make mistakes as the result of some bizarre conspiracy that turns out to benefit them in the end. Most of Boeing's mistakes hurt Boeing.
What I've always heard is the legacy defense contractors are used to cost-plus contracts where you don't make bigger profits by reducing costs. They sometimes don't adapt well to firm-fixed-price contracts because changing the organizational culture takes ages. And also the reality is that they can keep raking in money anyway -- Boeing is in fact collecting more cash than SpaceX, so it's not even clear the incentives have changed that much.
I think the more reasonable explanation for Boeing is that they already have access to ULA's proven launch vehicles, so designing a new one just for Starliner wasn't necessary. I think Boeing just chose a more conservative strategy while SpaceX managed to out-innovate them.
That's the legacy defense contractor strategy -- deliver something that checks off the boxes on the government requirement list at an exorbitant price. It's a very conservative strategy; lots of money, no risk.
The problem is that at some point SpaceX started landing rockets and the formerly safe strategy became extremely risky because Boeing/ULA not only has a competitor, the competitor is cheaper. But getting a fat, lazy organization to innovate and compete is hard even when facing an existential threat, and Boeing/ULA have not (yet?) managed that transformation. They've known it's necessary for years [1] but haven't been able to change course.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/03/ula-executive-admits...
The Commercial Crew contract started with NASA providing guidelines of what they wanted.
Multible companies could give a suggestion of their design and how much it would cost.
The two best of those were suggested. The amount of money was not assigned based on their evaluation what was better, that is absolutely not the case.
Rather they selected 2 proposals that had the best combination based of factors, including cost, design, program reliability and so on.
So Boeing was luck that their (at that point) high status got them selected over the cheaper bid of Sierra Nevada (who tried to fight the choice).
So its not like they first selected the two companies and then assigned them money based on how good their designs were.
It’s easy to claim that vapor is better. Making it into non-vapor, not so easy.
I do see that you at least put “better” in quotes... good call.
Off course, if Boeing messes up again, the carpet will be pulled from under their feet.
Edit: Changed Embraer to Bombardier thanks to emiliobumachar's friendly reminder.
I for one disagree pretty heavily with this ruling.
The WTO leaves you with three options as not the US. 1) Capitulate and lose about any industries as the efficiencies of scales of the US economy steam rolls any industries they don't explicitly prop up in your country (the Israel model if you're lucky, the African model if you're unlucky). 2) Cut yourself off from essentially all global trade (the North Korea model) 3) form a large enough economy that you can flaunt more and more of the WTOs rules because what are they going to do? (The Chinese and EU model).
I'm sure the Chinese will love that angle.
As for China, I think that angle is their acknowledged policy plus some.
Could you or anyone please explain what the DoD or its trade policies have to do with that? Or were you talking about another Embraer thing?
Them getting out of the commercial jet industry had the US's geopolitical fingerprints all over it.